A recent conversation from the Forum On The Hill series centered on protecting manufactured home communities. Locally, most manufactured homes are in need of repair or replacement, and nationwide, are threatened by development.
Orange County is a place people want to live and raise their families, and manufactured housing allows a lot of low-income housing families to do that, lead organizer for Orange County Justice United Julia Sendor said.
Orange County has nearly 100 manufactured home communities, and Sendor told 97.9 The Hill in December how most of the residents living there own their homes, but not the land those homes are on. She called the resulting dynamic a “strange situation” for current residents, where they have little control over the environment around their homes.
For example, while a manufactured home could be one of the few affordable housing types available to a family, the park itself might not be a safe place to live. And unlike mobile homes, she said manufactured homes can be difficult and expensive to relocate.
“So people were concerned about wanting to invest in their home, living in a park that was not being well-maintained, and actually really dangerous in terms of health and safety, with septic system failures, lack of water, trees that could fall and have fallen on people’s homes,” Sendor explained.
And nationwide, Sendor said international investors are starting to purchase manufactured housing communities, viewing the residents as not “100 percent stuck,” but limited in their options.
“There’s a strategy,” Sendor said. “Purchasing a park, doing the absolute minimum in repairs and maintenance of the park, raising the rents as high as people will be willing to pay, and squeezing every penny of profit out of it.”
Another long-term threat for the parks is redevelopment, which North Carolina Senator Graig Meyer said could force families out of the community because Orange County does not have an equivalent low-income housing situation.
“Imagine being a family of four on $30,000 in Orange County, in Chapel Hill,” Meyer said. “And then if you think of going into even the cheapest two-bedroom apartments in Chapel Hill, you’re probably paying $1,200 or more at this point.”
Meyer said manufactured homes are one of the few options that are actually affordable for Orange County’s low-income residents, stating how even Chapel Hill’s “affordable housing” might not be feasible for current families living in the local manufactured housing parks.
“These are the families where people are working in the service industry and off-the-books,” Meyer said. “They are a class below the workforce people that we usually talk about, and we all need them, we depend on them, they need to live close by, they cannot afford to drive long distances to go to work, and so here we are. They’re stuck, and we’re kind of stuck.”
But Meyer said it is crucial to find a solution soon. He explained how manufactured homes typically have a lifespan of about 50 to 70 years, and most in Orange County are reaching that point. Though he explained how addressing the root housing issue is not as easy as merely replacing them, citing how new homes can cost about $80,000, and residents might be living in used units worth $13,000.
And the state senator said purchasing land for a new park is so expensive to the point that it would be more cost-efficient to pursue regular homebuilding. For example, he suggested the land currently used for manufactured home parks could be turned into more permanent housing for those same residents.
“That’s difficult to do,” Meyer said. “You have to have a willing seller, you have to have willing community members… but you can potentially not only replace all of the units that the mobile home park has currently, but actually increase the total supply of housing if you build, for instance, townhouses and use the land more efficiently.”
However, Vice President of Construction for Orange County Habitat for Humanity Richard Turlington said the nonprofit saw challenges first-hand when exploring the option several years ago. Citing property costs as the biggest obstacle, he said Habitat for Humanity would need significant local government assistance or external funds to accomplish something like it.
Sendor called it an option worth pursuing, but short term, said these families need to be living in safe housing communities. She described the issue as without one, clear solution, but stressed for the town government to consider what these families can afford when creating public or private affordable housing.
Meyer said while there are elected officials who understand this issue, he urged keeping these invisible communities in mind when voting in both local and state elections.
“I’m hopeful that when we get into those deep housing conversations that we can advocate for some types of resident protections and opportunities for residents to have repair funds or energy conservation funds or things that we can make it easier for folks to stay in these situations in a way that is safe and healthy,” he said.
To hear the full discussion of the ‘Protecting Manufactured Home Communities’ panel, visit Chapelboro’s Forum On The Hill page.
Featured photo via Google Maps.
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